Henri Guédon / May 22, 1944 - Feb 12, 2006

May 21, 2017

One of my favorite Caribbean-born artists was master percussionist & composer Henri "Kiké" Guédon. Born in Martinique, he got his career going in the mid '60s with his band La Contesta. He played every style of Latin music, with strong funk & jazz undercurrents, to go with his Antillan and Caribbean musics (zouk, bomba, merengue, beguine, Cuban, etc) and even classical and avant-garde.

He was a major Latin music star in France and enlisted world class musicians in his bands. He performed with the percussion front-of-the-stage like his idol Ray Barretto. There are some good collections and reissues of some of his classic stuff. It must also be noted that he was a judo champion, as well as a fine artist (painting, sculpting, pottery, etc).